


The Vanished

by Rotpeach



Series: The Great Tumblr Rehoming of 2018 [33]
Category: Boyfriend to Death (Visual Novels)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Forests, Horror, Other, Prose and Poetry, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-27 17:41:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17166386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rotpeach/pseuds/Rotpeach
Summary: You found something in the woods where things go to disappear.





	The Vanished

Loneliness **  
**

is a thing of the distant past,

of your shoes sinking into the mud

footprints like breadcrumbs to be followed,

a bygone time when you believed

you could flee from the forest and that

somehow

it would not follow

its roots set too deeply, its branches too rigid

 

(you did not realize what lengths it would go to

how quickly it could grow, how far it could travel, how long it had dreamt

of holding you in flowering boughs and moss-lined hollows

as it rose up all around you and promised

that you had found happiness and needn’t search for it elsewhere

needn’t search ever again)

 

Loneliness

does not exist in these woods

in patience like the sequoia and shelter like the willow

 

He

presses his forehead to yours

 

(You feel him, alive,

gentleness in his branches

love in his sporophytes)

 

Liquid chlorophyll

warm, pale, sickly-sweet,

rolls from his tongue into your open mouth

and with the first drop

you are reminded of last time—

*

you came here, when he was lonely and you were lonely and loneliness was just an inevitability that made you both uneasy, and with each passing day he wanted to see you sooner and longer, he shifted tangled thorn bushes out of your path and twisted the branches overhead, curling them into a canopied walkway to shield you from the rain and lead you into the heart of the forest, anything for your comfort, anything to make it last.

You found him pacing nervously, his claws raking through leaves on the forest floor, his horns clicking against the branches high above you. He stopped when he heard you coming, turning to look at you with eyes that glowed like distant stars. The ground shook with each long, slow stride he took towards you. He crouched, resting on one knee, but he was still so much taller, a creature the size of an oak tree that knelt just so he could see you more easily, just so he could feel close to you.

The wind blew through his moss-covered, gnarled wood body, whistling through the hollow where his stomach should’ve been in an attempt to mimic a human voice, warbling and raspy and not quite right.

“You didn’t come yesterday,” he was saying, words slow and tinged with melancholy.

“Lawrence, I’m so sorry,” you told him, reaching up through a curtain of tangled, flaxen hair to touch his face. “I was busy all day, and when I finally had a minute, it was already so late….”

There was a quick, cold gust of wind that whipped past you, scolding, “I’m always here. Even if it’s late, I’ll still be here. You should have come.”

“I’m sorry,” you said again, tiredly, because you felt as though you’d done nothing but apologize lately, your every action interpreted as a malevolent display of your fading friendship.

(You can’t blame him, no, you know it’s in his nature, it’s

the nature of the forest to be possessive, to take

what humans abandon

and you

were ungrateful)

When you started retreating, he grasped your hand and held it tightly against his cheek, nuzzling into the flesh of your palm. The next breeze was softer. “It’s okay,” he was saying, “I forgive you.”

His rough fingers took your wrist—with the utmost gentleness—and he guided your hand down from his face to his neck. You felt no heartbeat but you felt warmth, soft and subtle, nestled deep inside of him.

“Stay here,” he whispered, his voice little more than the slightest rustling of leaves growing along his arms.

(He had begged you

He had meant forever)

You shook your head, apologizing again. “I can’t. You know that.”

“You could.”

“I can’t,” you insisted.

He sunk to the forest floor, sitting in the grass and holding you caged in the branches of his arms, refusing to listen to you, so you settled back against his chest and looked up at the night sky.

(It was so quiet then,

so silent

you could almost hear

the breath of the spiders spinning silk

in the hollow of his body)

A bird came to rest on one of his antlers, settling on a nest of his matted hair. The soft, night wind that passed through him carried the question, “Why do you have to leave?”

You shifted so you could lay your head back and look up at his face, but you found his attention on the moon instead, a faraway look in his eyes. “I wouldn’t do very well out here,” you said jokingly, trying to lighten the mood. “Humans are wimps. We like to have roofs over our heads and indoor plumbing, those kinds of things.”

“You don’t need those things. There are humans who don’t have them.”

“Well,” you said uneasily, “when you get used to having stuff like that, it’s hard to imagine life without it.”

He tilted his head and his hair shifted, a few strands falling off of his antlers and draping over his shoulders. “If you can get used to having them,” he reasoned, “then you could get used to not having them anymore.” The hint of a smile touched his lips and you hesitated to speak again, unwilling to crush the joy you saw creeping into his eyes. “You could stay then,” he said softly, nuzzling his face into your hair, “couldn’t you?”

“Maybe,” you allowed, shifting uneasily in his lap. “Maybe another time. I’ll bring a sleeping bag one of these days and try camping out. It could be fun.”

“Tonight,” he urged, “we should try tonight. Try to get you used to it.”

“I didn’t bring any supplies, Lawrence, I can’t….” You paused. “What do you mean ‘we?’”

(He

pressed his forehead to yours

you felt him, alive,

fondness in his leaves

dedication in his bark

 

Liquid chlorophyll

rolled from his tongue)

“What are you doing?” you’d said, voice tinged with fear as you struggled. “Lawrence, stop, I don’t want…whatever that is!”

He held you tightly in place, one arm growing and writhing, the branches twisting around your upper body, the other clutching your face and forcing you to crane your neck and look up at him.

“Lawrence!” you shouted, but he wasn’t listening. He didn’t hear you.

He forced his fingers into your mouth and held your jaw open, and the first drop went down thick and viscous and bitter, and you coughed, you went rigid and tried to pull away from the next one, and it splattered on your cheek instead.

You called his name again. The branches grew thorns, digging into your skin to hold you still. You cried and your tears slipped between the leaves and into the grass.

(He was honored to receive them)

The next drop was easier to swallow, the taste more bearable. The next one almost tasted good. And the next one,

*

comes easily

you drink from him like a lost vagabond drinks from an oasis

soothing your parched throat

 

He

is all you will ever partake in

all you will drink or eat

the rainwater dripping from his leaves and the fruit from his branches

 

He

presses his forehead to yours

 

(eyes like fireflies)

 

and the next drop is filled with memories

with the first time—

*

you heard him speak, which was not so long ago, his first word to you being the name “Lawrence,” and it hadn’t been spoken so much as it had been passed to you along the chilly night breeze that ruffled your hair and caressed your skin,

(the only voice you hear any longer)

and you were certain he had stolen it. You had sat there beneath a silver moon and a sky full of stars, leaning against the soft lichens that had begun to grow on his hard, bony shoulders since your last visit and you had wished that you really could stay forever. It had been one of those whimsical sorts of things people think at the end of a long day, when they’re weary of the company of their own kind, just a passing thought, just a brief fantasy. You had whispered it under your breath and you hadn’t thought he’d actually heard you.

(And that had been foolish, hadn’t it? For you sat in the middle of the woods

You might as well have been whispering into his ear)

You’d been on the phone all night, tying together flower stems to and looping them around his antlers absently, sighing, “Okay, Lawrence, I know,” talking to a friend, and when you hung up, you disentangled yourself from his arms and told him you had to go. You hadn’t expected an answer, but then you  heard the wind blowing, the leaves rustling overhead, and you thought you could almost make out a voice.

“Lawrence,” you heard.

You stared up at him, rendered speechless for a time. “What?” you whispered. “Was that you? Did you say that?”

He didn’t reply. He stood completely motionless and you started to think you’d imagined it, but the wind came again, blowing straight through him, and you heard the same name, louder this time, more certain.

“Lawrence,” he said. Slowly, he raised one of his hands, the branches twisting like snakes to make the approximation of a pointing gesture at his own chest.

“What…? Oh, no,” you laughed, thinking he was confused. It wasn’t the first time you’d talked to that friend while in the woods. You pointed at your phone. “Lawrence is my friend.” You pointed at him. “You’re also my friend. Lawrence doesn’t mean friend, it’s just his name. You probably have a different name, right?”

“Lawrence,” he’d repeated, and then, “My name is Lawrence.”

You blinked. “Is it?” you asked uncertainly. You were sure now that he’d misunderstood. Lawrence seemed too ordinary a name for him, too human. “Are you sure?”

He nodded, smiling. “I’m your friend,” he said.

You smiled back. “That’s right, you are.”

“You’ll stay here?”

You shook your head. “I’ll come back tomorrow. I’ll stay longer then, I promise.”

“No,” he said.

You stared at him. “…what?”

“No.”

“No what?”

“Stay,” he insisted.

“Lawrence,” you said, and it felt weird to call him that because you had your other friend’s face in your mind, “I need to go home.”

“I’m your friend.” The words came softly, barely audible, almost pitiful.

“You are,” you reassured him. “But I have other friends, too, like…uh, the other Lawrence. And I like to spend time with all of them.”

You distinctly remember your phone suddenly disappearing from your hands, plucked from your fingers by a vine dangling from a nearby tree. You watched helplessly as he took it and crushed it in his hands. His eyes were narrowed as he dropped the shards of broken plastic and bent metal into the dirt, but he smiled when he looked at you.

“No other Lawrence,” he said. “No other friend. Just me.”

You paled. You’d never thought to explain that Lawrence wasn’t literally your phone and was just speaking through it. You had no intention of doing so now. “I have to go,” you said quickly, shying away from his reaching hands and running back the way you came, glancing back over your shoulder just once, watching his smile slowly fall.

Your visits became less frequent then. You spent nights alone in your room only a little regretful, watching rain slide down the window pane

like

droplets of liquid chlorophyll—

*

sliding down your throat

(Climbing vines starred with violet blossoms

spiral up your legs and

spread their roots through your veins

trembling when you breathe)

 

He

presses his forehead to yours

 

(and you shiver, you

feel tears escaping in the time between, you

beg him with a tongue 

no longer accustomed to speech

you beg him and)

 

the next drop makes you think

of the first time—

*

you met him, a summer night with a bright moon, crickets chirping, your mind full of storms. They told you not to go there, they told you,

“It would be easy to disappear in those woods and never be found again,”

and that sounded perfect. You went with a length of rope and a pack of razor blades and a tin of pills in your bag because you couldn’t make up your mind, every step slow and unsteady. You found a tree to sit beside with wandering roots rising out of the dirt like it wanted to go somewhere. You sat there and you cried.

And the tree bent down, stroking your hair with its branches, wiping your tears with its leaves. You would’ve screamed but you thought maybe you were dreaming or dying or having a dying dream already.

You told him,

“I came here to disappear.”

He held you as you shivered and hiccupped and buried your face in his chest. He held you like he had known you would come, like he had

seen you from the edge of the treeline, disguised among the trees, his antlers hidden in the branches,

seen you crouch down in the grass and cry,

and he had waited.

And when you ran out of tears to cry you realized you were still alive, that it was not a dream, and that—strangest of all—you truly felt alive. You thanked him. You gave him your name. You said you had to go home, had to make things right, had to talk to people.

He watched you go, and you had no way of knowing then what he was thinking, how long he had waited, how long he had watched you, how badly he wanted to keep you.

*

Loneliness

is a thing

of the distant past

of a person who wandered into these woods and never really meant to stay

He  

presses his forehead to yours

 

(smiles when you whine, needy, thirsty,

dependent upon him

a garden for him to tend to)

 

Liquid chlorophyll

rolls from his tongue into your open mouth

you dream of yesterday

but you do not miss it

 

It would be easy to disappear

into these woods

and never

be found

again


End file.
